I am not alone! That is my discovery for the day, and is also the beginning of confessing a long held burden on my soul. See, I don't like grammar. I don't even have the slightest idea about grammar, nor how to teach it. ("Real" writers don't use contractions or words like "it" in their writing! That much I know!) As an aspiring English teacher I am suffering the effects of my upbringing. I am a product of the "free" 60's and 70's where children were encouraged to call their teachers by their first names, and it was assumed that if given an encouraging environment students would naturally learn...without direct instruction. Thus I don't ever remember learning anything about grammar and punctuation. Sure, I picked up on some rules through writing, but not enough to actually get up in front of a pack of 9th graders and teach it!!
But I am not alone! I read today in an English Journal that this is a rather common phenomenon in the English Arts classroom. Most English teachers approach their assignments feeling ill prepared for teaching grammar, especially in the light of NCLB's tough standardized testing. The good news is that teacher's learn the rules of grammar through teaching. Yay! There is hope. You have no idea how stressed out I have been over this educational flaw. Maybe, just maybe, with a few years of teaching grammar under my belt, I will ready to be an English teacher after all.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment